


The Hollow Man

by Nevcolleil



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BUT WHAT IS THIS??, Fix-It, If You Consider The Future Depicted in 15x20 To Be What It Seems, M/M, apparent major character death, i do not, perhaps something a little different
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:15:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27649402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevcolleil/pseuds/Nevcolleil
Summary: This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but with a whimper.-T.S. Eliot
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 7
Kudos: 45





	The Hollow Man

**Author's Note:**

> I have not written in a very long time. I have not written anything Supernatural in much longer. But. I don't have to tell you what made writing this essential to my mental health.

When it’s over… the fight - the whole mind-bending, soul- _crushing_ outrage of a war (outrageous because it was entrusted to _him_ to fight, _him_ and his baby brother, out of everybody on the whole frickin’ planet…)

It’s not like he doesn’t know it’s _over_ , it’s-

They defeated _God_. They.

They _feel_ over...

They feel done. Dean can sleep late if he wants to, eat a lazy breakfast whenever... Buy a _dog_ , at last, because dogs are awesome, and because Dean has a home where he can keep a dog now. He’s had a home for a while now, but it feels more like a home now - less like a port in a storm (a sanctuary.) It feels… ~~Empty~~ Like a place he can fill with things that you can’t trust to a war. A dog. A day trolling the internet for hot roadtrip possibilities, like pie festivals and classic car shows, rather than hunts.

It’s over. And Dean knows that he should feel free - that he should feel happy…

[ _...what my true happiness could even look like…_ ]

Dean does. 

Dean’s _happy_ hitting the road with Sammy for something other than another bloodstain he’ll have to scrub out of Baby’s interior. A reason he’ll have to suture something up on Sammy, or sit, wincing, on a creaky motel toilet seat, while Sammy sutures something up on him...

Dean’s happy waking up in his little bed ~~alone~~. Happy doing dishes while Sam does the laundry - not in a rush or as an afterthought, or way after the fact (when jeans that didn’t get soaked and de-stained fast enough have to be thrown away, dishes burned before whatever’s growing on them has to be salted and burned itself).

Dean is-

[ _...happiness isn’t in the having…_ ]

He’s so _fucking_ happy he can’t stand it.

~~God tried to beat Dean and Sammy to death with his own bare hands.~~

Dean is over the moon.

(And then he’s dead.)

Dean’s dead, and whatever Sam might think, Dean didn’t actually go into that hunt wanting to die.

He was joking about the not wanting to take a knife with him into that particular knife fight… (Mostly).

He _didn’t_ want to leave Sam, that’s for sure. Especially not like that - not so… so needlessly. So quietly. Because of a _vamp_? A frickin’ _masked_ vamp, of all things. (WHY is that a thing, even?) Especially not because of a vamp Dean and Sam already beat, what - fifteen _years_ ago? (In Dean’s case, something like fifty-five... half a goddamn century.)

Dean didn’t go into that hunt trying to die. At the hands of a goddamned masked vamp under the employ of a vamp whose undead ass he kicked countless apocalypses and dead ~~angels~~ friends ago…

Yeah, maybe he didn’t take the hunt that serious.

They rescued the kids. They avenged the dead parents. Sure, it’s a little… anti-climactic dealing with low-level vamps after he’s faced the fact that the one and actual _God_ actually wanted him dead. (No low self-esteem, self-psych-out bullshit. God had actively tried to murder him. Literally.)

Maybe he could have let Sam make that 9-1-1 call...

It took him long enough to die. 

Dean didn’t even have any blood on his teeth when he went.

But Dean didn’t _want_ -

[ _The one thing I want is something I know I can’t have…_ ]

Dean’s dead, and yeah, he’s not real happy with how it went down in the end.

Dean’s _always_ fucking hated that shit about the world ending without a bang, just a whimper. _Fuck_ going out with a whimper. But it’s not like it’s odd that he went and accepted it, right?

It’s not like there’s anything else he could have done…

Right?

It’s not.

It’s just… 

Not.

It _is_ a little… off-putting getting to Jack’s version of Heaven. (What is this… Heaven 3.0? 4?) And finding Bobby there - just Bobby. (Just the one person in Heaven he'd known for certain was all locked up.) 

Just "waiting" for Dean. Death by nail at 41 years old - what a hell of a thing to wait for.

It feels a little too perfect to be real... A little too clean for him.

A little too clean for _him_.

[ _I know how you see yourself, Dean..._ ]

It feels… ~~a little impersonal~~

But what else is Heaven supposed to feel like, huh? Where everything _is_ perfect - everything _is_ ~~Empty~~ clean… Everybody can just sit back (back, in the case of everybody but Bobby, out of sight even) and just wait for things to happen. 

Dean has everything he could have wanted in an afterlife. (Everything he could have _said_ he wanted.)

[ _...what my true happiness could even look like…_ ]

He has everyone he's ever loved (besides Sam and-) tucked away, safe - and happy. He has Baby. He has an eternity to do whatever he likes however he likes whenever he likes. He's free.

(And Dean knows that he should feel fr- He should _feel_ free.)

He doesn't have to scrub any blood out of anything ever again - he doesn't have to bleed. He never has to see another no-tell motel in the middle of nowhere ever again. All he has to do is _be_ -

[ _Happiness isn’t in the having… it’s in just being._ ]

All he has to do is wait (for Sammy to die.)

All he has to do is wait.

It's all he has to do.

Dean doesn't have to wait long, even. Time works different in Heaven, Bobby said.

That at least should ring true. In Hell, time crept past with a dying man's gait - forty years in a matter of months. Why shouldn't Heaven be the same?

Sam is with him in a blink. In the time it takes Dean to find the right dusty road to just wait on for his baby brother to finally die for good.

Looking like he hasn't aged a day.

Like all he's done since Dean died, himself, was wait. ~~Like: some happy ending his "normal" life had turned out to be, huh?~~

And Dean _is_ happy to be back with his brother. Happy that Sam got to live out the normal little life he's always wanted. (That Sam's always _said_ he wanted.)

Dean feels so much less ~~Empty~~... out of place with Sam back by his side. It's not even odd that Sam seems just as happy to be there, instantly. Doesn't need a minute to adjust - to mourn that normal life and the family he made in it.

It's not.

Sam is… Sam, that's for sure. The first thing he says after the hugs, after the long moments of staring off into Heaven's beautiful landscape - and longer moments of laughing at themselves and each other, laughing til their eyes are wet, for just standing there like complete morons, staring… Is:

"I can't believe you got killed by a _clown_ ," Sam says, laughter finally subsiding with a short huff of breath, like a sigh trying not to be one. Sam wipes his eyes.

And Dean laughs too. Those masks _had_ been sorta clown-like, right?

Sammy's worst fear. (At least one of them.)

"Laugh it up, old man," Dean teases, almost going for some stupid hospice joke or something, before the words stick in his throat.

"Is- is Jack here?" is Sam's second question. Dean doesn't put much thought into the tentative way he says it. 

Of course Jack is here. Why wouldn't he be? Up here fixing Heaven, tearing down walls... Answering the prayers of people who didn't somehow forget to pray to him. 

Dean nods. "Cas too," he hears himself say, as Sam's eyes widen. 

" _Cas_ is here?" Sam asks, like he can't believe it. Looks around like it's just assumed, if Cas is here... he's _here_.

Dean hadn't put much thought into that either.

He'd supposed it's another one of those things he doesn't have to do anymore - consider his angel, his friend. His-

Bobby didn’t seem to think it was something Dean might consider. Said how Jack had pulled Cas out, and that Jack and Cas had rebuilt Heaven (out of sight) like Dean didn't have anything to do with it - like he didn't think Dean would care to know the details.

Because Dean hadn't _had_ anything to do with it, had he? He hadn't been there. Jack (Cas) hadn't needed him there.

[ _"Because you cared, I cared…"_ ]

Dean shakes off the thought and says, "Yeah, somewhere, I guess." Just as casually as Bobby had spoken to him, trying out the same patient, pleasant ~~Empty~~ tone. He shrugs his shoulders, and there's a smile on his face. Dean can feel it.

Sam stares at him.

"So, Sammy…" Dean opens up his arms wide, gestures around them. "This is our Heaven. Well... everybody's Heaven now. Whaddaya wanna do with it?"

They do-

Everything. And nothing. (What’s the difference, once you’re dead?)

They do every bit of nothing they can find. Drive dirt roads and curvy mountain one-lanes, slick criss crosses of dark asphalt through and around and over nameless cities, just like the hundreds of back roads and mountain passes and bustling cities they’d driven through in life, except for the lack of any other cars. The complete absence of anything approaching a ‘bustle’.

Heaven’s not just reliving old memories, Bobby said, but they do. Some. They figure out what to think and where to drive to relive the happiest ones. ( ~~The safest ones.~~.) Then they get back on the road, and along the way Sam tells Dean everything that happened on Earth after he died.

Everything. 

It’s not like they don’t have the time.

Then they relive some memories again - this time Sam’s. Dean never got to meet his namesake, to know him in person. But after an… indeterminable amount of time, he can honestly say he’s watched him grow up.

They may have redriven every inch of the country they’d driven before they died - twice - by the time Sam finally works up the nerve to say it.

“Do… you wanna head back?” he asks, voice carefully ~~Empty~~ casual. “To the others?” 

Dean still hasn’t seen another soul up here. Sam knows only what Dean told him about Bobby, and what Bobby had told Dean about John and Mary, Rufus (and Anita), and Jack… and Cas.

They’re all still just hanging out in their own personal corners of this new, open Heaven, Dean guesses (still just waiting.) 

Dean hadn’t let himself put much thought into it, but when Sam asks, he wonders what he’s been doing, hogging Sam like he’s been - keeping Sam alone here in _their_ little corner of Heaven. 

They’re in Heaven, right? _Heaven_. And there are no walls now. (Right?) Of course he wants to head back and see the rest of their loved ones - _all_ of their loved ones. Of course he wants to take Sammy back to see Mom and Dad, Bobby… Jo and Ellen and, shit, Kevin. Everybody. (And Jack. And-)

Dean doesn’t know what he’s been doing.

[ _Everything you have ever done… you have done for love._ ]

Dean swallows. “Sure thing,” he says easily. He can feel himself smiling again. And he does a U-turn.

~~And _then_ he starts to panic.~~

The thing is- 

Dean knows ~~his life~~ it’s over. The war is over. God is dead… (Long live God.)

Dean _knows_ he should feel happy, and free... That there’s nothing else he could have done but accept it when his time came. (He feels that. Has felt it since… He’s felt it. For some time.)

Dean knows that before that- Whatever he could have done before that, he hadn’t. He’d frozen. He’d hesitated... He’d hesitated because he’d doubted, and then he’d frozen, and he can’t change that now because it’s over.

[ _You’ve changed me, Dean…_ ]

He-

Dean knows they’re in Heaven, him and Sam, and that he doesn’t have to do anything but be here in Heaven, with Sam, from now on. That’s all he has to do.

~~That’s all he has.~~

But knowing hadn’t stopped those few but endless empty mornings from building up in the back of his throat like a knot, like bile - like a sickness, waiting for the first touch of fever to really show itself. Hadn’t stopped the freedom of his first days after God- (After God tried to beat him and Sammy.... Beat them to _death_. With his... bare… hands…) from feeling less like freedom. More like he just couldn’t see where the bars were.

(Or he could see them. But he couldn’t bear to look.)

~~Dean hadn’t de-stained that jacket… after. Couldn’t bring himself to. Couldn’t image throwing it away either. Doesn’t know what Sammy did with the jacket after Dean died, but it doesn’t matter. Dean sees the perfect imprint of Cas’s hand on its shoulder in his head whenever he forgets not to think about it. Just like the jacket is right there in front of him.~~

Knowing hadn’t stopped Dean from dying in the stupidest, most senseless… on the most redundant case ever. Wanting hadn’t stopped it.

[ _The one thing I want is something I know I can’t have…_ ]

Wanting this to _be_ Heaven, to be happy and free here _in_ “Heaven” (with “Bobby”... and “your Mom and Dad”... and - fuck - with “Jack” and with-) Didn’t make Dean feel anything other than the no-longer-existant hairs on the back of his neck stand up when he stepped up to “the Roadhouse” and saw Bobby drinking the beer Dean’s dad had used to drink with him.

It doesn’t stop that knot from returning when he and Sam go to visit “Mom”... and “Dad”. And “Jo” and “Ellen”, and a man they introduce to Sam and Dean as Bill. And…

Dean is the one who straightens his back and starts to ask around where he should go to see Jack… or Cas.

He almost cries when “Charlie” tells him pleasantly that, oh, they just “kinda come and go… but I haven’t seen them around in a while.”

And his newly spiking panic recedes to manageable levels again.

He’s so relieved when Gabriel shows up, it’s only partly having stumbled over some loose rocks in the Tran’s front driveway that takes Dean to his knees.

Relief. _Relief_ is what really brings Dean down.

“Whoa. Pump the breaks there, big boy,” Gabriel tells him cheerfully, as playful and pestering as if the three (four?) times Dean’s watched him die - his short but terrible stay in Hell - never happened. “I get that you’re glad to see me… but you’re in Heaven now. They like us to keep the gestures of bromantic affection rated PG or below up here. At least in the other resident’s front driveways. Pick yourself up. I promise, you _don’t_ have to make it worth my while.”

“Gabriel,” Sam snaps, from Dean’s side where he’d hurried when Dean had dropped.

Dean’s too distracted to even pretend that he hasn’t just had to have his baby brother pull him up off the ground. Sam even brushes the dirt off of Dean’s coat sleeves and knees without Dean so much as twitching in his direction.

“You did this,” the words pop out of Dean before he even thinks them. So quick, it’s like they’ve been waiting for Dean to _let_ them be said for a very long time. Maybe not in reference to Gabriel himself, but-

“Oh, thank God,” Dean says without thinking anything further, and Sam stiffens at his side.

Gabriel’s smirk - or maybe it’s his eyes? - soften. Just a little. He winks and points at Dean.

“Exactly,” he says, as Dean and Sam gape at him, Dean swallows thickly, and he sees the look that crosses over Sam’s face out of the corner of his eye.

“ _You knew_?” they both turn and look at the other, and they speak simultaneously.

“Ah, there’s the fun, dysfunctional family interaction I’ve been missing,” Gabriel quips. “Two heads… no brain. Way too much mouth for just a couple of mortal yahoos.” 

Dean’s still looking mostly at Sam when Sam throws Gabriel an irritated looking glance, but he can see enough of Gabriel peripherally to see that the smirk’s gone completely off of Gabriel’s face, whatever’s he’s just said. There’s just a small, quiet smile left in its place.

“That something smells rank up here in Stepford-Heaven?” Dean scoffs, ignoring Gabriel and all of his (sorely missed, Dean is almost surprised to realize) complexities. “Yeah. I just-”

Dean doesn’t even know how to explain what he ‘ _just_ ’. But Sam’s expression looks like he understands anyway. 

“You just didn’t know what we could actually do about it,” Sam guesses (correctly), nodding slightly, just once. “Yeah, me either.”

“Yeah, I was starting to get that impression myself,” Gabriel reintroduces himself into their conversation. He’s still slightly smiling at them, and when he shakes his head, the gesture looks almost fond. “Ergo me having to blow my cover and zip on over here and make with the revealations,” Gabriel explains, in the least _explain_ -y explanation Dean can imagine.

“Boy, you two just do _not_ make the heroic rescues easy, do you?” Gabriel goes on, no more clearly. “ I feel bad for poor little Cassie, honestly. I really do.”

Dean and Sam ( _Sam_ , Dean could almost _sing_ to realize. He’d _known_ this, at least, was his Sam - really Sam - but Sam, standing beside him with an expression of wary hope, but also a guardedness and confusion to match Dean’s own, he’s sure, feels like a confirmation Dean hadn’t realized he needed so badly) look to one another again and then again back to Gabriel.

“ _Rescue_?” Sam asks dubiously. “If you _did_ this, _how_ exactly does anything you’re doing right now count as a rescue?”

But Sam knows that too, doesn’t he? They both do. They both know there’s only one way Gabriel could even be here right now, to sabotage or to save them - and that’s if someone, _something_ , resurrected him. 

And Gabriel himself said just which ‘something’ had done it. More or less.

“Holy shit,” Dean spits, as Gabriel clucks at his “language” in the background. Dean throws Sam a look of flat resignation. 

“You can call him that,” Gabriel says without missing a beat. “But… I don’t think he’d like it.”

Suddenly Dean knows a _lot_ less about what he’d thought he’d known - about the war… about Jack’s defeating God, about everything - than he’d thought he did.

“God did this,” Sam puts together, sounding just as flat as Dean feels.

Gabriel nods easily. “Popped right over to the Void while you two were entertaining the Empty with, apparently, a tasty dish of angel cake and a smooth pitcher of Reaper-”

“ _Hey_ ,” Dean snaps darkly.

“-pulled me out,” Gabriel continues as if Dean hasn’t spoken, “put me back together, and promised me my old room back in the family home, in exchange for me building you your very own “better” Heaven to keep you occupied while he tries to figure out how to get one over on your boy out there.”

Because of course - _of course_ \- that made more sense than _God_ trying to win the war he’d waged on Dean and Sam with a _fistfight_. However he’d known that the Empty had gone after Cas and Billie, however he’d managed to get down to the Void while it was gone… It was much more like the God they knew - like _Chuck_ \- to go through all that effort to trickster Sam and Dean out of his way than to meet with them in person for a showdown he could avoid some way.

He’s never liked getting his own hands dirty.

Story of the universe.

For the first time since... since this whole dog and pony show started, probably, Dean feels something other than- (Empty.) 

He’s full of righteous fury.

And then what Gabriel’s just said sinks in.

Sam stutters beside him, making the same connection, apparently, at the same moment.

“ _Out_ there?” Sam asks.

Not _down_. Not “on Earth”...

Gabriel had said “back” in his family home… not “ _here_ ”.

 _Holy shit_.

Gabriel blinks at them, wearing an exaggeratedly innocent expression.

“What? Did- Did you think this was _actually_ Heaven? Oh, boys…” Gabriel faux-frowned in exaggerated apology. “I hate to break it to you… But you’re not even dead yet.”

**Author's Note:**

> Words of comfort:
> 
> “Everything is going to be fine in the end. If it's not fine it's not the end.” - _Oscar Wilde_
> 
> "If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story." - _Orson Welles_


End file.
